


Five Times the Doctor Got in the Way of Captain Janeway (and One Time They Got Along Just Fine)

by lost_spook



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Community: dw_straybunnies, Crossover, Gen, Kathryn Janeway is awesome, Women Being Awesome, never come between Janeway and coffee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-29
Updated: 2011-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-18 19:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Janeway doesn't think much of time travellers and higher beings who turn up on board her ship.  The Doctor doesn't take much notice of prime directives.  It's a tea vs. coffee thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times the Doctor Got in the Way of Captain Janeway (and One Time They Got Along Just Fine)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LJ comm 'dw_straybunnies' prompt of the month challenge.

**One: Interfering Immortal(ish) Time-Travelling Saviour of the Universe (No, Not Q)**

*

“Hi,” said the Doctor, who was sitting on a dusty, faded ornate chair in the middle of the buried alien palace it had taken the Voyager away team three days to locate, identify and finally dig their way through in search of the energy source that might get them home. “Hello there! Great to see you, Kathy, by the way. You’ve grown your hair out again.” He paused and tugged at his own unlikely locks. “So have I. Sort of.”

Captain Janeway raised her phaser, refusing to respond to frivolous comments about her hair, currently twisted back into a bun. There was etiquette for first contact, but she ignored it, largely due to the gangly stranger’s smug expression and claims that he knew her. “Who the hell are you?”

“Ah,” said the Doctor, coughing and shifting his gaze away. “Right. Well, now, this is embarrassing, isn't it? You haven’t grown your hair – you haven’t cut it. Have you even met me before? What year is this now…? Ah. Yes. No, you haven’t. Right. Could take some explaining. Sorry about that.”

A resigned look crept into her eyes, while the Vulcan standing beside her said nothing and waited for her reaction, the ensign behind them also waiting.

“You’re a time traveller, or some non-linear being,” the Captain said eventually, raising her chin in a manner that would have had everyone back on board her ship running for cover. “What do you want with us?”

The Doctor straightened up and leapt to his feet with one bound. “That energy source you’ve come looking for. It’s fifty-first century technology. Now I’ve tracked it down, I’ll hand it back to its rightful owners. If you had it – it’d be a disaster. Whole universe might go kaput – BOOM – and we can’t be having that, now, can we?”

“How do I know I can believe you?” Janeway demanded, not relaxing her stance.

The stranger opened the door of a nearby blue box, and slipped inside, poking his head back out again with a smile. “Watch, Captain, and I think you’ll come to your own conclusions. You’ll like me better next time, by the way.”

“Somehow,” said Janeway, as the box vanished to the sound of wheezing and groaning that suggested it wasn’t in the best of repair, “I doubt it.”

***

**Two: Fellow Captives**

*

“I do wish you’d sit down, young lady,” said the elderly man who was currently her co-prisoner in an alien cell. “It’s no good glaring at me, and pacing about like that. Very tiresome, and distracting.”

Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Starship Voyager turned, and smiled instead. “No, I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault, sir.”

“No, no,” said the white-haired stranger, chuckling to himself suddenly. “It was _entirely_ my fault. I’ve been wanting to get inside this prison complex for a while – I thought they were never going to arrest me. I’m missing a member of my crew, and I believe they’ve stolen an item from my ship, you see.”

Janeway gave a quirk of her mouth, an outward sign of her inward ironic reflection that it might have been nice to know that _before_ she’d started trying to rescue the apparently frail, helpless, elderly man from being victimised by the tall, reptilian aliens. “You have my sympathy, then, but I’d like to get out of here.”

“Oh, I’ve no intention of staying in this cell,” said the stranger, beaming at her. “Dear me, no. That wouldn’t be any use, would it? Now, I suggest you keep quiet and let me see what I can do with this lock – I’d call it too complicated for its own good -.”

Janeway watched, unable to keep back a smile, her admiration for the plucky old guy increasing. “You had an interesting youth, I take it?”

“You could say that,” he returned, a light dancing in his eyes. “After you, my dear.”

The Captain nodded, and looked out. “Corridor’s clear. I’ve got a rendezvous to make in an hour, but in the meantime, I could help you find your missing crew member. What do you say?”

“Why, thank you,” said her elderly companion, graciously. “I’m known as the Doctor, by the way. How about you, young lady?”

Janeway reflected on her possible titles, and merely smiled at him. “Kathryn,” she said. “Lead on. I’m all yours – for the moment.”

*

“And so,” said the fair-haired, teenaged waif, who seemed to possess the same trait of landing on her feet as Janeway’s new-found friend, “ _then_ I said to the jailer I was feeling awfully unwell, and couldn’t he fetch me a glass of water before I passed out – like this -,” she added, giving a dramatic illustration of her actions at this point, “and he _did_ , so I hid behind that alcove there when he left, and, well, you should have heard the fuss he made when he came back and couldn’t find me! But I’m quite all right – and very pleased to see _you_ , Doctor.”

The Doctor hugged the girl. “And I you, Vicki.”

“Yes, and let’s hope Ian and Barbara haven’t made it back to the ship first,” said Vicki, to the Doctor. “Otherwise they’ll only _fuss_.” She looked to Janeway. “Oh. Thank you for looking after him for me.”

“Looking after me?” responded the Doctor, in instant, but not quite convincing outrage, puffing out his cheeks, and tapping Vicki’s nose affectionately. “Looking after _me_? My dear girl, I’ve got a good mind to teach you a lesson, and jolly well leave you in the next mess you land yourself in, how about that?”

Janeway shook her head to herself, smiling, and once they were out of sight around the main corridor of the complex, she put her hand to her communicator. “Janeway to Voyager – one to beam up.”

***

**Three: Meddling Tea-Loving Mechanic**

*

“My dear woman,” said the tall, elegant intruder in an improbable velvet jacket, “it’s all perfectly simple, and I don’t know why you won’t listen. That ship is being piloted by the Master, and if you don’t prevent him from reaching the nearest planet, there will be an intergalactic incident – millions of sentient beings may die!”

“Which would be awful,” added the girl with him, who was also wearing unlikely fashions from an earlier century. She turned her earnest gaze on the Captain. “You really should believe us. We’re telling the truth. Although there is something -.”

“Jo.”

Janeway glanced at Commander Chakotay, and only he saw the brief quiver of amusement that passed across her face. She had, of course, taken an instant distrust to the smooth-tongued, dark-bearded stranger, and the artefact that he had removed from Voyager (pledging most sincerely to return it to the Aramanian people) was in fact a dummy. However, she never enjoyed being patronised, or lectured, either, so she listened, and waited for the ideal moment – or merely the chance for a word in edgeways – to explain that to the traveller, who hadn’t yet accounted for his own sudden appearance on board _Voyager_.

“Please, your – your worship,” continued the girl. “I should say -.”

The tall man turned his curly white head in his companion’s direction. “Jo, she’s a Starfleet Captain, not a priestess.”

“There’s no harm in being polite,” said Janeway, refraining from laughter in the interests of politeness herself. “''Your worship’ is going a bit far for my taste, though. I usually stick to ‘Captain’ around here, don’t I, Chakotay?”

The commander was also biting back amusement. “You do, your worship.”

“Thank you,” Janeway retorted. “That will be all. Doctor, about this friend of yours -.”

“He’s no friend of mine!”

Janeway paused. “There’s something I should tell you, and then you can get off my ship, and stop causing trouble.”

“Trouble?” burst out the Doctor. “You have to listen to reason, or there’s a whole planet in jeopardy -.”

Janeway folded her arms, “Yes, I know. And there’s a whole ship in uproar here, Doctor. Firstly, what did you do to the replicator machines, and why have you been upsetting my ship’s cook?”

“You call him a cook, do you?”

The Captain gave him a cold stare. “When I’m not addressing him as Morale Officer, or an ambassador, yes.”

“Do you, now?”

Janeway smiled, “Yes. And now, I think you should know that what your acquaintance has stolen is in actual fact, a harmless copy of the real weapon.”

“ _Oh_ ,” said Jo, her eyes widening into huge, dark wells.

Everyone looked at her.

“I swapped the copy for the real thing,” Jo explained breathlessly. “I saw it, and obviously, I thought that was the dummy, and so I changed them over. I was trying to say, Doctor, but -.”

There was panic on the bridge; everyone rushing to the nearest controls, and the Doctor turning with a: “ _Jo_ …”

Lieutenant Paris gave a cough, turning the chair around from where he was piloting the ship, and made a sheepish grin in Janeway’s direction. “Ahem. I happened to see Miss Grant make the exchange, so I switched them back again.”

“I’m getting a headache,” said Janeway putting a hand to her forehead. “Which does he have now?”

Paris grinned again, and gave Jo a wink. “The copy. I didn’t say, because I didn’t want to get a nice girl like Miss Grant into trouble, and we’d kept the actual weapon, so no harm done. She was only trying to do what we’d done in the first place, after all, so what was the point in mentioning it?”

Jo blushed.

“Coffee. Now,” said Janeway. Then she looked at the Doctor. “If you’d be so good as to _un_ fix the replicators.”

The Doctor turned a faint pink, and rubbed his chin. “Yes, you see, the one in my room couldn’t manage a decent cup of tea, and I think you’ll agree that I’ve considerably improved on the flavour, colour and texture-.”

“With the minor downside that now they produce nothing _but_ tea,” Janeway pointed out. “Even aside from the imminent mutiny if you don’t sort it out, nobody likes it when I’m deprived of caffeine. Coffee, now, Doctor – or else!”

***

**Four: No Way Back**

*

“Hey, we were getting on well, Kathy – what’s the problem? And – wait – you knew it was me this time?”

Janeway turned around, an angry light in her eyes, folding her arms, as she faced the intruder in the battered leather jacket. “What? When have we ever gotten along? Four months ago when you randomly turned up, meddled with the replicators and caused a persistent fault we’ve only now fixed? Or did you mean the time you swiped an energy source from under our noses? And don’t call me Kathy. It's Captain Janeway. Kathryn at a pinch. You don’t get to call me Kathy.”

“Right,” said the Doctor. “One of the down-sides of time-travel. We’re all out of step.”

“Anyway, look around you. You're surrounded by state of the art technology – enough to identify a repeat intruder, even if he does happen to be a shape-changer. Now, what do you want?”

The Doctor coughed. “I was only passing. Thought we could have another chat. Want a hand with anything?”

“All I want is to know what you’re doing here.”

“There’s something aboard your ship that doesn’t belong. Dangerous.”

“I knew it. In that case, after I hand it over, maybe you can see about giving us all a lift back home?”

“Now that’s something I’d have a problem with, see, because -.”

Janeway paused, and then smiled at him. “We’ll deal with your crisis first. Wouldn’t want the timeline falling about our ears, or something exploding on board. Then we can discuss terms.”

“Terms?”

“You owe me, Doctor.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Doesn’t mean this girl isn’t going to try.”

“Yeah. Somehow I knew that, too.”

*

“Why not? Don’t give me the temporal prime directive!”

“What’s that when it’s at home?”

Janeway rolled her eyes. “You’re maddening. Why won’t you have the decency to take a bunch of stranded exiles home when you’ve got the means?”

“It’s not about decency. It’s about stopping the timeline from turning into a complete mess and having paradoxes unravel the very fabric of existence – and you’ve already got so many paradoxes surrounding this ship you don’t need another one, trust me.”

“Don’t give me that, Doctor. I can’t stand time travel and all that garbage – gives me a headache trying to work it out.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Out of step, like I said.”

“I am asking you to take these people home. They didn’t make the choice to stay here. They never signed on for this. Some of them never signed on for anything. I want to get them home, and you could do it – and you stand there arguing with me over your precious principles-.”

“I’d have thought you’d have understood that.”

Janeway was drawn into a smile. “I do. I’ve still got to ask. That’s the part where _my_ principles come in. Why not?”

“You’re an historical event,” the Doctor told her. “I don’t want to let your ego get any bigger, but quite an important one. Anyway, there’s the other thing, and I think you know what that is.”

“Oh?”

The Doctor folded his arms, leant back against the wall of the corridor and smiled at her. “Yeah. I could get your people back home – except I can’t, like I said – but not the ship. And are you telling me you’d abandon _Voyager_ out here in the Delta Quadrant? Alpha Quadrant, Starfleet technology, lying about in this backwater?”

“No,” said Janeway. “That’s not your business.”

“It might be. Would all your crew agree to go home in those circumstances? Wouldn’t some stay? And if they didn’t, how long would you last out here, alone?”

Janeway glared at him. “My funeral, not yours, Doctor. Literally.”

“I’m right.”

She marched on ahead of him, choosing not to answer.

“You want to make amends,” the Doctor said. “I know how that feels. I got involved in a war, and made a decision, too. Other people paid. I don’t want to talk about it. Much worse than stranding people on the far side of the galaxy without the bus fare home.”

“Is this sympathy or a lecture?” Janeway asked, turning. “I’m not sure I deserve either. Especially from some ethereal higher being, because I’ve had enough of that to last a life-time, I can tell you. At least you didn’t try to seduce me first, so let’s be thankful for small mercies.”

The Doctor paused, and spluttered. “No. Definitely wouldn’t do that. Not me. Not this me, anyway.”

“I made my choice,” she said, putting a hand on his for a moment. “You made yours. And sometimes it’s tough, and I’ll buy yours being tougher than mine, but if you won’t bend the rules on my behalf, and I can’t do anything for you, I suppose the only thing left to do is make the best of things.”

“I don’t know.”

Janeway gave a small grimace. “Sorry. I keep forgetting – you haven’t explained. So, if I'm being insensitive, forgive me. Let’s get back to the point in question: what if I was only asking you to take some of the most vulnerable members of my crew-?”

“You don’t give up, do you?” said the Doctor, giving a grin. “Well, listen to me, then. You’re a legend, back home, you and your ship. I might as well save the _Titanic_ , persuade the crew not to abandon the _Mary Celeste_ , or save the _Lusitania_.”

Janeway rolled her eyes. “That’s flattery, not a reason. And I'd like it if you stopped talking about _Voyager_ in the same breath as ships that sank.”

“Put it another way, then: It’d be like turning up at the end of the Trojan War, and saying, ‘Hey, Odysseus, fancy a lift?’”

The Captain shook her head. “Ten years. I don’t know whether to turn pale with horror at the thought, or hope it’s going to be that quick. I am going to get us home - and, thanks, because I think you’re implying that somehow the journey’s going to be worth everything.”

“You always wanted to explore, didn’t you? And now you’ve got the best opportunity any human’s ever been handed. Don’t tell me there aren’t days when that doesn’t make your heart beat a bit faster.”

Janeway smiled again. “Maybe. Oh, I understand what you’re saying, Doctor, but I’d ask you the same question if I saw you again – and I bet if someone _had_ offered Odysseus that lift, he wouldn’t have complained if he’d known what the alternative was.”

“I didn’t say it was easy.”

“Good, because then I would have had you thrown in the brig.”

“You know you like me, really. You wait till next time. Or maybe it was the time after...?”

Janeway stared back at him, taking in the implications of that. She put a hand to her forehead and decided she was going to need more coffee.

***

**Five: Forced Vacation**

*

It had taken the EMH Doctor issuing threats to get Janeway to agree to a couple of days’ vacation, but now she was here, on a remote section of a beautiful alien planet, she wasn’t sure she couldn’t have lived with a week or more.

She was in need of a few days of peace and quiet, and Chakotay was under orders to contact her the second anything happened, and she was going to be in transporter range the whole time, so she needn’t worry about missing anything important.

Janeway sat down on the empty beach and fished out a book – of the old-fashioned, paper sort, a favourite she’d kept with her – and smiled to herself.

The smile froze on her face, as a blue box appeared out of nowhere, sending sand into her face, and disturbing the peace with its tortured sounds, sending a few odd lizards and birds scattering for cover.

“Observe, Peri,” said an impossible figure in yellow-striped trousers and a patchwork coat that seemed to have been designed to leave no colour on the shelf, as he stepped out onto the beach. “Is this or is this not a perfect holiday destination?”

Janeway closed her eyes in resignation. There was only one person it could possibly be. The last person she wanted joining her on a vacation. Well, she amended, _one_ of the last people she ever wanted to see while on vacation.

“Captain Janeway!”

She forced a smile, and got to her feet. “It’s you, Doctor, isn’t it? Again. What this time?”

“Nothing. Peri and I are here to enjoy a short, relaxing break. What, may I ask, are you doing in this delightful spot?”

Janeway smiled properly at the dark-haired girl, and then turned to the Doctor. “Then I hope you enjoy yourself. I was going to do the same, but I’m not sure the planet’s big enough for the both of us.”

“Don’t be nonsensical, ma’am,” the Doctor said. “You won’t even notice we’re here. I shall melt into the background. There's nobody more discreet than I.”

Somehow Janeway felt that to be unlikely.

*

She walked back up from the shore, and touched her comm badge. “Commander Chakotay, one to beam up.”

“Captain? You’ve only just got there, and you know what the Doctor told you -.”

“Trust me, the one thing I’m not going to get down here is a peaceful vacation. I’ll spend all the time he wants back on board with a holo-novel, but there’s an emergency down here, and I have to leave.”

“An emergency?”

“Yes. It’s a matter of life or death, Chakotay.”

“Life or death?”

“Yes. Get me out of here now, or I’m going to murder someone. Understood, Commander?”

“I don’t know, Captain. If you’re exhibiting homicidal tendencies, maybe we should isolate you – leave you down there. We shouldn’t take any chances.”

Janeway paused, and glanced back where she could see the two brightly coloured figures scrambling about on the rocks, the Doctor lecturing as they went. “Commander. One to beam up _now_ , or I’ll be exhibiting homicidal tendencies towards you and your misplaced sense of humour when I make it back – and trust me, I’m leaving this rock one way or the other. Just do it!”

***

**And the One Time: Partners in Crime**

*

Janeway raised her hands with a resigned expression as she faced the armed alien. (Oh, for a peaceful away mission, she thought. Sometimes she wondered why they bothered leaving the ship.)

“We have also captured your accomplice,” the orange-coloured, scaled Grusian outlaw informed her. “If there are any more of you, you should say now, or we will kill them on sight.”

The Captain gave a small shrug. “No, just the two of us this time. Can’t we discuss this? Maybe we could come to some sort of agreement.”

“You are only fortunate that we have not killed you on sight. Our leader is discussing your value as hostages.”

She gave a wry quirk of the mouth. “That’s something to be grateful for, I suppose.”

There were footsteps approaching through the cave behind her, and she stared at the ceiling. She’d hoped her security officer would have been a little bit more successful in eluding this bunch of outlaws.

“As usual, I seem to have landed us in it up to our necks,” she murmured. “My apologies, Tuvok.”

“Oh, that’s quite all right,” said an unfamiliar voice as a stranger with wavy brown hair, wearing a velvet jacket was pushed into line beside her. “I think I can fairly say it was as much my idea as yours, Charley.”

Janeway raised her eyebrows, but managed to swallow her shock. Whoever the newcomer was, he seemed to be willing to play along with her mistake, and that was to her advantage. “Mr Tuvok, gentleman. He’s -,” she hesitated, because even this band of thugs were surely going to question the likelihood of this man being her security chief. “A scientist attached to our ship.”

“Absolutely,” said the fake Tuvok with enthusiasm. “Always wandering away, collecting samples and getting myself into trouble, aren’t I, Charley?”

“I’ve told you before,” said Janeway. “I don’t care for that nickname. Captain, or Kathryn, if you don’t mind, Mr Tuvok. In public, anyway.”

*

Fifteen minutes later, they had been left alone, tied back to back into a dingy, damp, and distinctly odorous cave.

“Nice to see you again, Captain,” said the stranger.

Janeway said, “Do I know you?”

“It’s the Doctor.”

She rolled her eyes. It would be. “I might have known. Charley?”

“My current companion, who, I hope, is out there trying to help us.”

“Tuvok should be doing the same,” said Janeway. “Unluckily for us, we can’t raise Voyager down here. Some properties of the rock – I thought it might be worth investigating. Look, I’d rather not sit here, waiting for them to decide it’ll be as easy to execute us.”

“Not at all. In fact, I’ve been trying to do something about that for the past five minutes, but I can’t reach my hand into my left pocket. You couldn’t -?”

Janeway chewed her lip, and had a go. “Done. Doctor -!”

“Well done! Try to keep your voice down, though. They might hear us.”

“Something _bit_ me! What the hell do you keep in there?”

“Probably only a piece of live currency – nothing to worry about. Now, that sonic screwdriver – like a sort of fat pen, metal -.”

“I’ve got it.”

They managed to fumble an exchange.

“That had better work,” Janeway told him. “And you ought to clear out your pockets first, before you go and get yourself tied to some unsuspecting individual.”

“You never know what’s going to come in handy, that’s the trouble. And if I haven’t said it before, if I had to get tied to someone, I couldn’t have chosen anyone better.”

Janeway worked on trying to get her hand loose, not having much faith in a screwdriver of any sort. “Nice of you, but I don’t think flattery is going to much use.”

“You were the one making insinuations about us out there. I did notice, Kathryn.”

Janeway shrugged. “I’d already introduced myself as Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager. You were calling me Charley. I had to give them some explanation before they started wondering if there wasn't something just slightly suspicious about that.”

“Yes, yes, quite. I’ve snapped one of the cords, so we’ll soon be out of here. Now, it’s very important that we stop old Fanatical Fred and his merry band from completing their work here, so -.”

“Slow down,” she said. “Firstly, I’ve no idea who Fred is, and I’m not at liberty to interfere in a local skirmish. There is the Prime Directive.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Doctor, sounding cheerful, as the ropes fell away. “That. I love your Starfleet and all its little rules! Don’t do this, don’t do that, and be nice to everyone - at least until after they’ve blown up your planet and proved they were up to no good.”

“Are you making fun of Starfleet? Because those guidelines and rules are there for very good reasons -.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, leaping up, and moving round to help her, but Janeway was already standing.

Janeway caught at his jacket sleeve before he could bound away. The velvet felt unexpectedly thick and soft under her fingers and she realised it had been a long time since she’d touched luxury material outside of the holodeck, and somehow there was always something lacking there. “Doctor. Start again. Who’s Fred, and what are you up to?”

“Well, all right, he’s not really called Fred, but we’d be here all day if I tried to pronounce his actual name,” the Doctor explained. “He and his people are – well, I suppose there’s no other word for it – terrorists. The Grusians have only recently acquired a stable and marginally more democratic government than they’ve ever had in their history. This lot would like a return to the days of the emperors who were exactly what you’d expect from autocrats who give themselves grand titles. They’re mining down here – these mountains hide a very rare mineral that has huge destructive capabilities when treated correctly. They don’t have to obtain very much of that before they can level the capital and start again.”

“And you’re out to stop them?”

The Doctor said, “I accidentally arrived during the new leader’s inaugural ceremony and I’ve got to help out or he’ll have me executed for that.”

“That’s not why you’re helping, is it?” she said.

He grinned. “No. I do have a tendency to get involved.”

“I don’t have that liberty,” returned Janeway. “There are times when I wonder – especially out here, so far away from Starfleet Command. We could settle somewhere – use our advanced technology to help people. Forget the prime directive and become a force for good in this quadrant.”

The Doctor had his hand on her arm now. “But you won’t.”

“No,” said Janeway, meeting his gaze. “It’s now we’ve got to cling to those rules more than ever. What right have I got to decide the future of races I know nothing about? Where does that sort of thing stop?”

“And you haven’t given up on getting home.”

“Never,” she declared. “However, since you’ve got me out of a fix, I don’t see why I should stand in the way of _you_ helping out these people and their brave new world.”

The Doctor nodded, and peered around the corner, checking for guards. “My people aren’t completely unlike yours. Think themselves so enlightened and powerful – too much so to interfere. That’s one of our cardinal rules.”

“You don’t seem to worry about that much.”

“Somebody’s got to be the one who interferes,” he said. “I don’t speak for them – merely a passing traveller in a battered, old police box, you see.”

*

“Well,” said Janeway, twenty minutes later, once they were tied up even more firmly, and back in the cave, “that worked out.”

“It was unfortunate,” the Doctor agreed. “He’s taken my sonic screwdriver, too. I’ll see if I can wriggle my way out of these-.”

It was probably as well that the cavalry arrived shortly after.

*

“Miss Pollard was most helpful,” Tuvok said to Janeway, as they walked away, leaving the other two to finish off the rebels. She and Tuvok had at least provided a brief distraction outside the system of caves, drawing most of the rebel group out of the way. “Somewhat talkative and possessing an unfortunate tendency to rush into things rather than pause for contemplation, perhaps, but a resourceful young lady nonetheless.”

Janeway shook her head. “I’ve known you about as long as anybody, and even I don’t know whether that was a compliment or an insult.”

“We should reach the Delta Flier presently,” Tuvok said, refraining from comment on anything more frivolous.

Janeway heard a shout behind her, and turned to see the Doctor and Charley running towards them, hand in hand.

“Run!” yelled the Doctor, waving his free arm about wildly.

Behind them, there was an explosion in the mountains.

*

“You killed them!”

The Doctor had made a valiant effort to take his leave of the Starfleet officers moments ago, but Janeway had dragged him into the shuttle, on the threat of having Tuvok shoot him if he tried to escape.

“I suppose in some sense, you could say that, but -.”

Janeway folded her arms. “For once, I decided to trust you, and you blew up that rebel base. I’m not going to turn sentimental, Doctor, but I’d prefer it if you’d at least given them due warning, and I don't approve of murder.”

“Sometimes there isn’t time for that,” he said, and then turned. “Kathryn. They did it. I told you they were playing about with a volatile material. I found them, and when I saw – I tried to warn them, but you know what these fanatics are like. They wouldn’t listen, so I did the only thing I could – grabbed Charley and ran for it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, letting go of her anger. “I’ve been misjudging you, haven’t I? The first time I met you, back in that underground palace, I thought you were some sort of near relation to the Q, and I’m not happy about super-beings playing about with us mere mortals.”

“Neither am I,” said the Doctor. “You could say I make it my life’s work to prevent that sort of thing.”

“And then there was that incident with the replicators,” she continued, with a wave of a shapely hand. “I’m not fond of those who come between me and a well-deserved cup of coffee.”

“Quite. I’m the same way about tea.”

Janeway turned to face him fully, and held out her hand to him. “If that’s your agenda, it’s one I can support whole-heartedly. Friends?”

“Oh, I hope so,” he said, shaking it with enthusiasm.

Her smile grew. “And next time, you can call me Kathryn - Kathy, if you really want. There aren’t many people round here who don’t call me Captain. I’d value another.”

“I'll consider it a privilege.”

Kathryn drew back. “One condition, though, Doctor.”

“Oh?”

“Propose to me in any way, shape or form, and I’m going to have to kill you.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “I shall try to restrain myself.”

“There’s a story,” Janeway said, with a quick smile, and patted his arm, as they made their way out of the Delta Flier back onto the surface of the planet. “Next time, crises permitting, I’ll explain.”


End file.
